Panel Session | Math3ma Symposium 2024
00:00:00.000 | I know Titan A has mentioned this, but you all are answers to prayers.
00:00:13.320 | When we started the Mathema Institute, Titan A and I have constantly prayed that the Lord
00:00:18.100 | would help us connect with believers in the sciences.
00:00:21.280 | And my heart is full seeing you and seeing all of you here.
00:00:24.920 | You are all the answer to our prayers.
00:00:26.760 | We can't stress that enough.
00:00:30.200 | Let's start by asking a few introductory questions.
00:00:34.920 | So if you would please introduce yourselves, tell us your full name and what is your academic
00:00:40.080 | background and where do you work?
00:00:43.200 | And we'll start, let's see, over here.
00:00:45.840 | My name is Zisong Wang.
00:00:47.120 | I came from China.
00:00:48.120 | I got my PhD in electrical engineering this year at UC Irvine.
00:00:54.460 | Thank you.
00:00:55.460 | Finally.
00:00:56.460 | Yeah, it's a seven year program for a PhD.
00:01:00.800 | And then currently working at Irvine in Marvell Semiconductor Technology, working for CHIPS
00:01:06.560 | for optical communication.
00:01:08.280 | Yeah.
00:01:09.280 | Hi, I'm Joey Kim.
00:01:12.080 | My PhD is in chemical engineering.
00:01:14.180 | I got it at the California Institute of Technology and I am very blessed because I get to work
00:01:20.800 | here at the Masters University as part of the biology department, as well as being the
00:01:26.640 | department chair of the engineering and computer science.
00:01:29.200 | So very lucky to be here.
00:01:30.720 | Hi, my name is Karl Geier.
00:01:33.100 | I'm from Germany.
00:01:34.100 | I moved here now years ago to study at the Masters Seminary.
00:01:36.720 | Before I came here, I worked as a physician in Germany.
00:01:40.800 | So the trauma and orthopedic department, but the Lord called me now here.
00:01:44.240 | So my story is quite different from the other folks, but I'm happy to share.
00:01:47.400 | Well, you don't know, maybe it's the same story.
00:01:52.040 | Andres Solonpas.
00:01:53.040 | My first PhD is aerospace engineering from University of Virginia.
00:01:55.440 | My second one, working on it now, material science at Johns Hopkins University.
00:01:59.100 | I'm a department chair for cybersecurity, American public university system, quite a
00:02:02.900 | bit of work in machine learning, AI, also a lot of hardware development stuff.
00:02:06.480 | Thank you.
00:02:07.480 | Thank you.
00:02:08.480 | Wow.
00:02:09.480 | I love the diversity of backgrounds here, especially, you know, academic backgrounds
00:02:13.800 | and things like that.
00:02:15.080 | Feel free to connect with them as, you know, people from your field.
00:02:20.920 | And I would like to continue by asking, what was your upbringing?
00:02:25.480 | Did you grow up in a Christian home?
00:02:26.640 | Did you grow up in a non-Christian home?
00:02:28.520 | If you grew up in a non-Christian home, how did you come to know the Lord?
00:02:33.200 | And we'll start on that side with Andres.
00:02:35.240 | Sure.
00:02:36.240 | Yeah.
00:02:37.240 | So definitely not a Christian home.
00:02:38.240 | Eastern Europe back in 1980s, if you know about Eastern Europe in 1980s, enforced atheism,
00:02:43.560 | nothing but atheism, and that's kind of what we grew up in, in the house.
00:02:50.040 | Anyway, it's a very long story I'll have to share one day.
00:02:59.320 | So I grew up in non-Christian home.
00:03:01.720 | The first 10 years of my life, when I was 10, my parents got saved.
00:03:07.400 | But my life changed very radically from a very liberal way of life to very legalistic
00:03:12.720 | and conservative.
00:03:13.720 | So I saw, like, in a way, both ends.
00:03:15.800 | And this raised, like, a lot of questions.
00:03:19.400 | If the Bible is true, and if this kind of church has this kind of laws and rules, and
00:03:23.520 | we can't find them in the Bible, what is the Bible about?
00:03:26.520 | So I started to read, to study the Bible more for my own, to get the answers of the questions
00:03:32.720 | that the church couldn't provide.
00:03:34.780 | And I think with the time, even starting with the wrong understanding of the gospel, the
00:03:38.760 | Lord was gracious and opened my eyes to see Him in His grace.
00:03:43.640 | - Yeah, I grew up, it's hard to say Christian, but I can for sure say church-attending family.
00:03:50.160 | That was, like, one of my first earliest memories was just running around at church.
00:03:55.640 | But it was a Korean church, and I'm seeing most of you guys aren't Korean, so just to
00:04:00.960 | give you a little insight, it seems they care more about morality as opposed to the gospel.
00:04:08.740 | And so just growing up in church, I just learned to be, you know, things like humble, sacrificial,
00:04:15.340 | and that's what actually really led me to pursuing a PhD, because I wanted to essentially
00:04:20.860 | make the scientists and engineering community my mission field.
00:04:26.040 | Nevertheless, I hear, like, you know, some, you know, calming assurances, no, I didn't
00:04:34.360 | know what the gospel was.
00:04:36.280 | So my motives was actually to really become famous and influential.
00:04:40.600 | But that's kind of the deceptive nature that I grew up in.
00:04:43.420 | And it was only when I was in graduate school that I was fed up with a lot of the California
00:04:50.140 | churches that I've been attending, their superficial teachings, that I decided to Google, or yeah,
00:04:56.860 | turn to Google for, like, you know, spiritual nourishment, which you should, I highly don't
00:05:03.160 | recommend, and I also knew that, by the way, but that was just the point of desperation
00:05:08.200 | that I came to.
00:05:10.200 | And luckily, the Lord used that as an opportunity, despite that being a terrible idea.
00:05:16.160 | That's where I was first led to, you know, Paul Washer, and through a series of his messages,
00:05:21.680 | I actually became to know what the gospel was.
00:05:24.880 | And I had an inclination to really drop my PhD at that exact moment, go attend seminary,
00:05:31.520 | because the Korean churches definitely needed the gospel.
00:05:35.720 | However, going back into a little bit of my testimony, I decided to finish my PhD and
00:05:42.520 | still, you know, well, I still have that mission field of making the science and engineering
00:05:47.160 | community my mission field, and that's where the Lord has brought me here.
00:05:50.840 | And now I get to mentor the next generation of engineers in the way that, you know, the
00:05:56.680 | Lord sees fit.
00:05:57.680 | And of course, I tried to do everything from the Bible-first standpoint.
00:06:02.320 | >> I guess it's my turn.
00:06:06.240 | Thank you.
00:06:07.240 | So I grew up in China, atheist family.
00:06:09.700 | My father is a mathematician, mother is a doctor in the ER room.
00:06:14.720 | So I was thorough atheist, I would say, growing up.
00:06:21.560 | Before my conversion, I never went to church almost.
00:06:26.080 | Lord has really, I would say, go beyond the normal to save me.
00:06:30.100 | When I come to America, all I want is just build my American dream, my career dream,
00:06:38.360 | get the best education as possible.
00:06:40.720 | And then there's time I just want to end the academia, everything, but Lord never give
00:06:47.720 | me up.
00:06:51.000 | Through knowledge, I cannot learn Him, basically.
00:06:53.920 | I just think it doesn't make sense.
00:06:56.380 | If you guys believe God, show me, right?
00:06:58.960 | As an engineering or scientific mind, we don't even believe what's published by peer-reviewed
00:07:03.600 | papers.
00:07:04.600 | How come you bring up to me several uneducated guy, give me some manuscript, even different
00:07:13.480 | from each other, and then tell me this is absolute truth and no argument?
00:07:21.080 | If you don't believe this, you're a sinner.
00:07:23.600 | Right?
00:07:24.600 | What is going on here?
00:07:25.600 | Right?
00:07:26.600 | That's always my question.
00:07:28.280 | No one can show me any solid proof in my mind at that time.
00:07:32.680 | But through life, Lord slowly lead me to Him.
00:07:36.800 | My mom passed away very early, and she's a doctor.
00:07:41.080 | We just hear the message, you have a lot of medical knowledge, you cannot heal life.
00:07:45.560 | And I know that from my personal experience.
00:07:47.360 | My mom got a chronic cancer, chronic tumor in her head, five years, and leading to death.
00:07:54.360 | She can heal a lot of people, but she cannot even heal herself.
00:07:58.000 | When she got that diagnosis, she's like, death sentence, right?
00:08:03.040 | Then the entire family become nothing.
00:08:05.880 | Spring Festival in China become my nightmare, because everyone is celebrating.
00:08:11.720 | I have to go back home, cook for my mom and father.
00:08:16.520 | That's all my college.
00:08:20.080 | And then when I first began my PhD, the first year, my best friend committed suicide, age
00:08:30.920 | 27, top student.
00:08:33.880 | He has a very rich family.
00:08:35.920 | I remember their family bought a tea table for like $100,000, hired the entire plane,
00:08:43.040 | just don't want anyone to touch it.
00:08:46.480 | And when he got deep depression, I was like, why you got deep depressed?
00:08:52.120 | I have a much worse life, and I'm still fine, why you got deep depressed?
00:08:56.720 | I thought he's joking, but years later, he committed suicide and died.
00:09:02.480 | And then I pursue, basically, relationship.
00:09:06.200 | I used to have a girlfriend.
00:09:07.440 | We dated for eight and a half years.
00:09:10.000 | And because of long distance dating, we end up broken up, break up.
00:09:15.120 | So before I know the Lord, basically, my career, my life, my friendship, everything, by the
00:09:23.960 | way, even my PhD, I initiated at USC, and the work I was doing there was taken over
00:09:29.680 | by someone else.
00:09:31.620 | So then my career, my friendship, my family, everything, the Lord has shown me in my life,
00:09:37.360 | this is a vanity.
00:09:39.360 | And that time, Christian come to me saying, oh, God so love the world.
00:09:42.640 | I think that's nonsense, because why God love vanity?
00:09:46.680 | It just doesn't make any sense to me.
00:09:49.000 | But Lord see me anyway, I think through prayer.
00:09:53.640 | There is time I was involved in a very complicated situation.
00:09:57.360 | I just like, okay, I give the Lord a try.
00:10:01.200 | It's not biblical, but Lord had showed grace to me anyway.
00:10:04.040 | He answered my prayer.
00:10:05.820 | Something I cannot figure out for months, he helped me figure out in a few hours.
00:10:13.240 | And I was really like, what's going on here?
00:10:16.400 | - What was that?
00:10:17.760 | - We have time for that, okay.
00:10:22.120 | That was a relationship I was really trying to pursue.
00:10:25.720 | She actually was a non-believer, but she's a professing Christian.
00:10:29.920 | I was trying to date her.
00:10:32.400 | And through her, actually, I met the pastor who baptized me.
00:10:37.440 | I was trying to date her.
00:10:39.040 | She asked me to go to a restaurant with a young out, sit down with her pastor.
00:10:45.240 | And she got a phone call, she went away.
00:10:47.880 | And then I have to sit down with this pastor.
00:10:51.320 | That's my first time I have to hear gospel, because I don't know when that girl will come
00:10:57.520 | back.
00:11:00.160 | And amazingly, that night went very well.
00:11:04.080 | And I was like, oh, so Christianity is not totally nonsense.
00:11:07.960 | He explained to me what is vanity, why God still love this world.
00:11:13.160 | The gospel suddenly makes sense to me.
00:11:17.040 | And then I was like, showing me whether you are true.
00:11:20.920 | And then that night, within three hours, Lord actually showed me this girl I was pursuing.
00:11:28.200 | She's not believer.
00:11:29.480 | She's actually simultaneously dating three boys.
00:11:33.040 | So I was like, by my own wisdom, I cannot figure this out, why she is so weird.
00:11:38.320 | But God can figure it out.
00:11:40.520 | That night, I was like, okay, this God doesn't care who you said you are.
00:11:44.360 | He care about truth.
00:11:45.960 | He care.
00:11:46.960 | And I immediately have fear.
00:11:47.960 | I was like, He even know what kind of a girl I will like.
00:11:52.160 | He even know when I'm going to be very, you know, creepy to follow a girl.
00:11:56.520 | He set everything up to finally lead me to gospel, to Jesus.
00:11:59.920 | I was like, how can he be so gracious to me?
00:12:03.240 | It just doesn't make any sense.
00:12:05.400 | So I began to follow him till now, yeah.
00:12:08.480 | Praise God.
00:12:09.480 | Carl, we'll start with you on this question.
00:12:12.160 | What made you interested in science in general?
00:12:17.040 | So early on in my childhood, I loved the nature.
00:12:20.880 | I loved butterflies, all the kind of insects.
00:12:23.360 | But in the same time, I also loved or was interested in any kind of diseases.
00:12:28.520 | I always asked, okay, why did this person has to suffer?
00:12:32.400 | Or someone had like an accident, there was a fracture, or how can it heal again?
00:12:36.360 | So it was always this kind of interest in my life.
00:12:40.080 | When I finished my 10th grade in school, I decided first to do something completely different.
00:12:47.000 | I did an apprenticeship becoming an electrician first.
00:12:50.800 | So I went through this kind of three years.
00:12:53.720 | In my second year, so my grandparents, they left with us, and my granddad got a very aggressive
00:13:00.720 | kind of cancer.
00:13:01.720 | He died in a few months only.
00:13:03.880 | So on the whole time, all this kind of things with the doctors, the visits, all this diagnosis
00:13:09.000 | and therapies, we had no idea what does happen.
00:13:11.360 | So I said, Lord, I was in a way always interested in medicine, and it's not easy to get into
00:13:17.840 | med school.
00:13:18.840 | It's kind of hard in Germany, but I thought if it's your way for my life, I would love
00:13:23.200 | to go this way to serve you first of all, but also so many people who needs help, not
00:13:27.720 | because I can heal them, but because I saw how many questions people even have.
00:13:32.680 | And if I can help them, I would be happy to.
00:13:35.920 | So basically, I said, Lord, if you want to have me there, you will open all the doors.
00:13:40.260 | And he was graciously also in this.
00:13:42.640 | And I started in Münster.
00:13:44.280 | It's like a bigger med school in Germany for six years.
00:13:48.360 | Yeah.
00:13:49.360 | Amazing.
00:13:50.360 | Andrei, what about you?
00:13:51.360 | Yeah, I always had interest in mathematics.
00:13:54.680 | So actually, when the way things worked in Ukraine back in the day is essentially they
00:13:58.960 | put you in the schools and all the schools have numbers.
00:14:01.160 | So I was in school number four, but I found it a little bit boring.
00:14:04.480 | So I just out of curiosity, I went out and applied for this like very math heavy, what
00:14:08.600 | do they call it, it's not a gymnasium, but anyway, they have a special name for these
00:14:12.760 | type of schools.
00:14:13.760 | And I was accepted, which was great.
00:14:16.120 | And so long story short, like this mathematics was actually like always, I found it exciting,
00:14:21.520 | you know, and I guess maybe one thing that I'll say, you know, when the way the society
00:14:26.360 | was structured back in the 80s and the 90s in Eastern Europe, you were told what you're
00:14:30.440 | going to do.
00:14:31.440 | It wasn't like, go try things out.
00:14:32.440 | No, it was like, you will be a scientist, you will be a doctor, you know, it sounds
00:14:36.640 | like, all right, well, there it is.
00:14:38.220 | So and then the other thing that I had passion for is I thought I was going to be like an
00:14:41.560 | astronaut and fly, and so anyway, that interest has always been just intrinsically in me.
00:14:48.360 | You know, it just so happens that I eventually, you know, joined the military, kind of like
00:14:51.320 | traveled the world, searched God all over the world, you know, but eventually I realized
00:14:57.160 | that, and I think I've done enough deployments, I guess, in my life, and I realized that for
00:15:00.400 | me to probably live to the age of 30, I probably have to go to college, even though I told
00:15:06.320 | my parents I'll never do that.
00:15:08.240 | Here I am, you know, teaching kids, but, you know, that's the way things worked out.
00:15:14.440 | When I went to college, I was in my, maybe like early 20s, mid-20s by this point, and
00:15:18.600 | I really, really, really enjoyed it.
00:15:21.240 | Like an early class for me, like 8.30 compared to the military at 5.30, right?
00:15:25.080 | So it was like early classes, really, like mid-afternoon, but, and I fell in love with
00:15:30.320 | that.
00:15:31.320 | I mean, I loved it.
00:15:32.320 | It was the easiest thing I've ever done.
00:15:33.320 | Well, I don't want to say that, but anyway, I did fall in my first qualifier, never quit,
00:15:36.480 | and I did apply to Johns Hopkins on three occasions before I finally got accepted once.
00:15:40.400 | So the point I'm trying to make is never quit.
00:15:41.680 | I mean, everybody can do it, I think, but, you know, and then I think once you get into
00:15:47.240 | it and you kind of, at some point, I think it was maybe like third or fourth year of
00:15:50.600 | my undergrad studies, like things clicked, and I was like, oh, I get it, like these equations
00:15:54.880 | actually make sense, and after that, it's just never stopped, I never looked back, and
00:15:59.160 | I love it.
00:16:00.160 | I think, you know, the earth, the universe, everything testifies of the glory of God.
00:16:04.080 | It truly does, you know, right now we're working a lot of the high power computing, you know,
00:16:08.800 | we're talking quintillions of computations every second, every second, quintillions of
00:16:12.880 | computations.
00:16:13.880 | What is quintillions?
00:16:14.880 | Oh, quintillions?
00:16:15.880 | I don't know that word.
00:16:16.880 | Yeah, yeah.
00:16:17.880 | So multiply a million times a million times a billion, yeah, every second.
00:16:23.440 | So just think of the number of zeros after that, and we've been working on these models
00:16:29.000 | for years, and we can't break the smallest code of these enzymes that are ten times smaller
00:16:36.880 | than the smallest known enzyme in the human body.
00:16:40.080 | Think about that.
00:16:41.080 | Mind-blowing.
00:16:42.080 | So whoever created the human body clearly is brilliant, beyond our wildest imagination,
00:16:48.600 | army of Nobel laureates armed with literally infinite memory, computing power that we can't
00:16:55.240 | even dream of, and we can't even break, you know, a structure, we can't even model a structure
00:17:02.640 | that is ten times smaller than the smallest known enzyme in the human body.
00:17:07.320 | Think about that.
00:17:08.320 | And I think, you know, to me, just science testifies of the brilliance of God.
00:17:13.280 | I think it's very naive when people are like, "I'm going to stand before God and ask Him
00:17:16.560 | questions."
00:17:17.560 | It's like, I don't think it's going to go that way.
00:17:18.560 | I think it's going to be more like, "Oh, wait a minute, I put you on the planet Earth to
00:17:22.560 | do a certain thing for me, and you didn't."
00:17:25.320 | I think it's going to be more like that conversation.
00:17:26.640 | But anyway, that's my interest in science.
00:17:28.320 | I love that.
00:17:29.320 | What about you, Zisan?
00:17:30.320 | When I chose my career, at that time, I was an unbeliever, so I chose whatever can bring
00:17:37.800 | my own self-benefit, and I grew up in China, also kind of patriarch, that's how they train
00:17:43.160 | you.
00:17:44.160 | At that time, China is backward in cheap design, so I chose that area.
00:17:49.000 | That was why I chose that, and Lord slowly showed me even in that area, it's kind of
00:17:55.640 | vanity, you know, in many ways.
00:17:59.180 | But after I followed God, I can see God's glory can be reflected even through the cheap
00:18:05.920 | design.
00:18:06.920 | I mean, the small chip I designed, it's like a fingertip, like a nail size, right?
00:18:12.760 | And that takes years for a thousand PhDs to develop a single one, and sometimes we make
00:18:18.180 | mistakes.
00:18:19.180 | But then I think about God, who designed the whole universe in six days, and he made no
00:18:27.800 | mistake, and just by himself, just speak the word, and it happened.
00:18:32.160 | I was like, my brain used to challenge him, question him, you know, how foolish I am and
00:18:40.240 | how glorious he is, yeah.
00:18:42.840 | Joey?
00:18:43.840 | Money.
00:18:44.840 | Honest.
00:18:45.840 | So, I wasn't naturally interested in the world.
00:18:55.720 | I wasn't good at math.
00:18:57.760 | My high school GPA was 3.1 or something, so I was just passing by with, I got a collection
00:19:03.920 | of A's, B's, and C's.
00:19:06.400 | But my family, I think probably many of you guys might be able to kind of connect with
00:19:14.320 | me on this.
00:19:15.320 | A lot of the arguments that my parents had was financially motivated, and so for me,
00:19:22.680 | being a believer at the time, money was the solution to pretty much all of my problems.
00:19:27.920 | And so that's what really motivated me.
00:19:30.640 | Initially, oh, excuse me, could I get some water?
00:19:38.320 | So I actually began as a chemistry major, and as the summer was progressing leading
00:19:45.480 | up to my freshman year, people were just giving me counsel, like, oh, you need to switch to
00:19:49.580 | chemical engineering, you need to switch to chemical engineering, and I was like, wait,
00:19:53.680 | why?
00:19:54.680 | Like, so originally, I wanted to leave as many options as possible, and pharmacy at
00:19:59.520 | the time was paying quite a bit.
00:20:02.440 | And so I wanted to leave that as an option, but during orientation week freshman year,
00:20:07.360 | this is before I stepped foot in a single class, I went up to my academic advisor who
00:20:13.000 | was in the chemistry department, and so I asked him, I was like, hey, a lot of people
00:20:17.360 | are telling me to switch to chemical engineering, can you tell me the difference between the
00:20:21.080 | two?
00:20:22.280 | And he was like, okay, in chemistry, you take reactants, and then you make a product.
00:20:28.280 | And I was like, all right, in chemical engineering, you take reactants, and then you make profit.
00:20:33.880 | I was like, all right, no brainer, and so as soon as I went back to my dorm before my
00:20:40.280 | butt hit the chair, I was beginning the process of switching to chemical engineering.
00:20:45.880 | And after I did, the following semester, my decision got confirmed, because I remember
00:20:51.080 | I was with my friends, and there was a postdoctoral, you know, teacher who was teaching a class
00:20:56.600 | or two, and out of curiosity, me and my friends asked him, hey, how much do you make?
00:21:02.240 | He thought a little bit, he was like, probably less than you think.
00:21:05.640 | I was like, wait, what?
00:21:08.320 | But there was a professor overseer who was actually running the course, and so my friends,
00:21:15.880 | we asked him, oh, what about Professor Lenhoff, how much does he make?
00:21:20.240 | He pauses, he's like, probably more than you think.
00:21:23.680 | And at that point, my dollar signs in my eyes, and I'm like, yes, I made the proper decision.
00:21:30.480 | And ultimately, I share this, because now I don't really care about money at all.
00:21:35.960 | And that, for me, was the power of the gospel, and I don't know, do we have time to go over?
00:21:41.280 | I'll just share that.
00:21:42.440 | So I was just money motivated, that was pretty much it.
00:21:47.080 | And I'm not, once again, I still don't know the gospel at this time, but I was going to
00:21:52.120 | church, and one of the pastors, he shared a testimony on somebody else's behalf of like,
00:21:58.720 | oh, this person, she had the opportunity to go to MIT's mechanical engineering PhD program,
00:22:05.580 | but then she gave it up to be a missionary in Europe.
00:22:09.680 | And he set this to, once again, highlight this sacrificial nature, the thing that a
00:22:15.320 | lot of Korean churches are promoting.
00:22:18.140 | But for me, when I heard that, I wasn't impressed at all, actually, I wanted to throw up.
00:22:24.200 | Because I saw the atheistic nature of the science and engineering community, all of
00:22:29.440 | my professors, how my students were behaving.
00:22:32.340 | If you wanted to do missions, why not go to MIT?
00:22:36.740 | That for me, I, yes.
00:22:39.380 | And so I'm not, I was I sinfully judging this unknown person back then, yes, I think that
00:22:47.140 | judgment is improper now, but nevertheless, the Lord did use that moment to really change
00:22:53.580 | something in me, to rip the idol of money out of me, because when my world was shaking
00:22:58.880 | at that time, I told God, I was like, God, if you give me an opportunity to go to a place
00:23:02.900 | like MIT, I'm going.
00:23:05.260 | And by the way, this was literally a long shot, because I told you my high school GPA
00:23:09.300 | was 3.1.
00:23:10.300 | My SATs, I got a 480 on the reading and writing comprehension, literally, I can statistically
00:23:17.500 | show you the power of God by looking, by comparing the average SAT scores of Caltech students
00:23:25.900 | to my SAT score.
00:23:28.060 | It is a world's difference, but the Lord made that happen.
00:23:31.820 | And this is why, even though when I heard the gospel, I wanted to give up my PhD, I
00:23:37.420 | did recall that moment, I said, Lord, if you give me an opportunity to go to a place like
00:23:43.660 | MIT, I'm going.
00:23:45.420 | The science and engineering community will be my mission field, and that's why I stuck
00:23:49.340 | it out, and the Lord brought me here, and I'm just so thankful that I still get to serve
00:23:54.340 | him in that capacity.
00:23:55.340 | - I love that, and I think many of us resonate with the heart to be missionaries or be sharing
00:24:00.860 | belights in our workplace, so thank you for that, that was wonderful.
00:24:04.980 | So we'll start with you, Joey, on the next question, since you're tearing up.
00:24:11.740 | So this is a question for all of you.
00:24:13.380 | For those of you who work at secular institutions or have worked at secular institutions, could
00:24:18.000 | you talk a little bit about what that's like, and also witnessing how you've been lights,
00:24:23.900 | how you've seen the Lord working, and also, could you talk about people's reactions to
00:24:28.300 | you as Christians?
00:24:29.300 | Have you faced persecution?
00:24:31.140 | Have people been supportive?
00:24:32.140 | Have you had opportunities to share the gospel?
00:24:35.060 | Joey, we'll start with you.
00:24:36.060 | - Yeah, I'll begin.
00:24:37.060 | I think the level of hostility has changed from when I was in undergrad to graduate school.
00:24:42.260 | So in undergraduate, a lot more of it was just kind of like implied, whereas in grad
00:24:48.140 | school times, this was when a lot of the abortion debate was heating up, as well as a lot of
00:24:55.700 | racists, these kind of notions began to come into play, so it was a lot more explicit opposition.
00:25:03.460 | But nevertheless, regardless of how in my face it was, there was just an implied cultural
00:25:10.540 | understanding or assumption that the Bible was wrong, because Bible was from 2,000 years
00:25:16.420 | ago, science has developed, we now know things that people didn't know even two years ago.
00:25:21.700 | I trust this fairy tale book from 2,000 years ago, and that was pretty much the basic assumptions.
00:25:27.780 | And so when I was telling my friends, "Oh, there's a Christian meeting that I'm going
00:25:32.940 | to on campus, they're all working," they thought I was being lazy and stuff.
00:25:38.140 | It was an excuse to not work, although I stayed up till 4 a.m. pretty much every single day,
00:25:44.460 | but they still kind of had that accusation.
00:25:49.700 | In graduate school, it became a little bit more explicit, and I think I'll just share
00:25:54.060 | this one notable experience.
00:25:56.700 | As my PhD was finishing up, I was speaking with my advisor about the future plans, like
00:26:04.500 | what am I going to do afterwards?
00:26:05.820 | I told her my intention was to continue in academia.
00:26:09.980 | At this point, I did know the gospel, I did reorient my thinking into forget money, I
00:26:15.860 | want to be a missionary in the science and engineering community.
00:26:22.060 | That did not mean, actually at that point, just to show you, highlight how much of a
00:26:27.820 | bubble I lived in, I didn't know Christian universities were a thing.
00:26:31.980 | I thought it was public school or all private schools were Catholic.
00:26:38.020 | That's what I grew up in.
00:26:40.420 | So I wanted to teach, obviously not at a Catholic school, just a public research institution.
00:26:47.340 | There was one advice that my advisor gave me, and it was not, "Highlight this research
00:26:53.940 | that you did, how it was a very difficult problem, but you solved it," it was not that.
00:26:58.340 | It was not, "Oh, go speak to this person so that he can write you a letter of recommendation,"
00:27:03.140 | it was not that either.
00:27:04.700 | The only advice that she gave me was, "Don't tell them you're a Christian."
00:27:09.540 | I was like, "What, what?"
00:27:12.300 | She obviously saw my expression and she reiterated, "If you want to get hired, don't tell them
00:27:18.100 | you're a Christian."
00:27:19.100 | In my mind, I'm like, "That's illegal," and I think I actually also said it because she
00:27:25.220 | responded with, "They don't care."
00:27:28.640 | They don't care it was illegal to reject me based on my religious belief.
00:27:33.820 | That's when I was like, "Do I really want to work at a place like this, much in opposition?"
00:27:40.600 | I know I wanted to be a missionary, but I was a very young believer at that time.
00:27:45.180 | I was still searching for, one, just understanding what the Bible was about, and secondarily,
00:27:53.020 | just even if I know what the Bible is about, I'm so young in my spiritual faith, I don't
00:27:58.220 | know what living the Christian life looks like.
00:28:00.500 | I also wanted some level of Christian mentorship, not just for them to tell me doctrinal knowledge,
00:28:07.420 | but how they actually live.
00:28:09.600 | This is, at the same time, my world flipped upside down because Pastor John in one of
00:28:15.820 | his sermons mentioned the Master's College.
00:28:18.980 | I Googled what the Master's College was, and now it's the Master's University.
00:28:23.100 | Wow, Christian universities are a thing.
00:28:26.660 | Ever since then, TMU was my dream job, or dream destination to teach at, and that's
00:28:34.100 | kind of how everything transpired.
00:28:36.940 | But yeah, in terms of the level of hostility, my single advice I got for pursuing future
00:28:43.740 | career paths was to simply say, "Don't tell them you're a Christian."
00:28:46.660 | Yeah.
00:28:47.660 | Wow.
00:28:48.660 | What about you, Seung?
00:28:51.780 | Me, I just began to work, so there's still some tasks.
00:28:56.060 | After my Ph.D., my professor is kind of, I don't know what he may consider himself as
00:29:00.060 | God.
00:29:01.060 | I remember before Easter, even this year, close to my graduation, he said, he clearly
00:29:07.900 | knows I'm a Christian.
00:29:08.900 | He said, "Okay, this one, you cannot go to church.
00:29:12.780 | You have to finish this paper.
00:29:14.260 | I guarantee you, you listen to me, you will not go to hell."
00:29:16.860 | I was like, "How can you guarantee me that?"
00:29:20.220 | Well, that's basically my entire Ph.D., I consider him as my Egyptian pharaoh.
00:29:24.660 | I was praying, "Lord, when will you deliver me from this?"
00:29:29.020 | Yeah, he delivered me the enemy, finally.
00:29:33.700 | I was like, I'm a very impatient person, but this is Lord's providence for me to really
00:29:37.580 | learn how to be patient.
00:29:40.340 | But during this program, seven years, Lord didn't put me there in vain.
00:29:44.900 | I was actively involved in Bridgeton National, it's a campus ministry under campus crusade,
00:29:51.940 | specifically reaching out to international students.
00:29:54.680 | At least, I think there are three or four students came to Christ through me.
00:30:00.820 | Last year, I baptized together with a seminary, we baptized a Turkish brother who used to
00:30:09.420 | be actually a radical Muslim.
00:30:11.220 | Well, he actually got his green card because he applied asylum for Muslim faith.
00:30:17.300 | He's that radical, even Turkish government has to persecute him.
00:30:20.420 | Now, he become a full-time minister at campus crusade.
00:30:24.740 | Yeah, that's just Jesus Christ, that's God.
00:30:28.620 | So Lord didn't waste my time there.
00:30:31.140 | And in my work, the company, I remember when I was doing intern last year, I have a colleague
00:30:37.020 | sit down with me, and opening mark of him is, "All religions are stupid, all religions
00:30:43.060 | are stupid."
00:30:44.060 | I was like, "Okay."
00:30:45.060 | I was like, "Okay, I don't know how to do that," but I said, "I probably will agree
00:30:48.740 | with you, all religions are stupid, but I will tell you, Christianity is not religion,
00:30:52.220 | it's just truth."
00:30:54.500 | We had an interesting conversation, and after a while, he said, "Oh, okay, I figured."
00:30:58.180 | I said, "Yeah, this is just your belief."
00:31:01.060 | I used to think like that, but it's not like that anymore, it's just a different set of
00:31:07.300 | belief.
00:31:08.300 | You can have your own opinion, make it logical, but God's logic, it make more sense to me.
00:31:15.260 | That's just apologetics opportunity.
00:31:18.280 | But I think most encouraging time during that internship, if you remember, I shared my testimony,
00:31:24.700 | my PhD work was taken over at USC to another student, and we were colleagues at the company.
00:31:31.460 | So at the last week of my internship, he sit down with me during lunch, somehow, the other
00:31:37.020 | colleagues left, and they pick up their lunch, and we sit on the same table, just me and
00:31:43.260 | him.
00:31:44.260 | And he said to me, he said, "Jisung, whatever happened at USC, I did for you, I'm really
00:31:50.700 | sorry."
00:31:51.700 | I was like, "Huh."
00:31:52.700 | And he said, "What do you see?"
00:31:54.380 | I said, "Actually, I don't have a thing for you, because through that, Lord saved me.
00:32:00.820 | So I thank you for this."
00:32:02.700 | He look at me, he's like, he's a Muslim, but he didn't really know God's forgiveness.
00:32:07.620 | I said, "This is God's message for me to you, that God loves you also, and God also
00:32:13.860 | will forgive you.
00:32:14.860 | And who am I to judge you?"
00:32:17.540 | So yeah, that intrigues him about, okay, so Muslim God and Christian God is very different.
00:32:24.340 | He's still not believing, but I'm still trying to witness to him.
00:32:27.860 | Yeah, that's all I want to share.
00:32:30.500 | Yeah.
00:32:31.500 | Amazing.
00:32:32.500 | Congratulating.
00:32:33.500 | What about you, Andre?
00:32:34.500 | Yeah.
00:32:35.500 | So, you know, when I was at UVA, I guess, you know, I came to Christ very late.
00:32:40.180 | I was at the University of Virginia, maybe not quite a graduate student.
00:32:44.180 | Yeah.
00:32:45.180 | Actually, you know what?
00:32:46.180 | Yeah, I was a graduate student at that point.
00:32:47.180 | I had an internship in Moscow State University.
00:32:48.740 | Long story, anyway, the pastor flew out, we talked, and finally, anyway, I was a graduate
00:32:54.420 | student.
00:32:55.420 | But after my repentance, you know, I kind of was like, you know what, I'm going to,
00:32:58.780 | if we're going to do this, we're going to do this right, right?
00:33:00.940 | So under my signature block, I put, "But unless you repent, you all too shall perish," right?
00:33:07.580 | It's just a quote from Jesus.
00:33:09.360 | And I put it on my UVA signature block, and so then every email that goes out, you know,
00:33:14.520 | to my dean, to my chair, to my professors, to fellow students, I'm like, you know, maybe
00:33:18.980 | some read it, maybe some don't, and you know, and I got mixed feelings.
00:33:23.340 | So I'll say this, my advisor at the time, she's a dean of research now, and I'm not
00:33:28.540 | going to name her, but she was very open to it.
00:33:31.620 | She was very open, very understanding, one of the, like, the leading scientists in her
00:33:36.380 | field.
00:33:37.380 | But there were others who would, like, email me back, and they're like, "You asked me
00:33:40.660 | for a question, you asked me for help, and then you told me I'm going to perish.
00:33:43.380 | Why would you do that?"
00:33:45.220 | But my response is, "If you don't believe it, what are you worried about?"
00:33:49.180 | You know?
00:33:50.180 | And then they're like, "Well, yeah, that's true."
00:33:52.900 | So, but then something deep inside, it's like, "Oh, wait a minute.
00:33:56.820 | What is going to happen?"
00:33:57.820 | You know, and so there was a mixed feeling, and there was one time I was applying for
00:34:01.020 | a job, kind of a long story, but I was coming into this research field, and the hiring manager,
00:34:07.300 | you know, we interviewed.
00:34:08.300 | I think it went great.
00:34:09.300 | I mean, I thought it went really well.
00:34:11.140 | She emails me back, and she says, "About this signature block of yours, do you think you
00:34:15.620 | could fit in our office?"
00:34:16.620 | And I was like, "Yeah, absolutely.
00:34:17.620 | Why not?"
00:34:18.620 | You know?
00:34:19.620 | I mean, you know?
00:34:20.620 | And long story short, I didn't get the job.
00:34:23.740 | They never told me why.
00:34:25.260 | I don't know.
00:34:26.260 | But, you know, that was a blessing in disguise, because somebody else reached out, and they
00:34:30.460 | actually gave me a higher salary, and they put me into this office where I really enjoyed
00:34:35.060 | it, and this person became my mentor to this day.
00:34:38.660 | This person is very, very high up there right now within the government.
00:34:41.980 | I'm also not going to name—if you want to know offline, I'll tell you all their names,
00:34:45.580 | you know?
00:34:46.580 | But, yeah, that person is a mentor.
00:34:49.060 | Like, to this day, this person, like, if I call them, within 20 minutes, I get a call
00:34:54.100 | back.
00:34:55.100 | Now, this person is, like, really high up there, reported to the Secretary of Defense,
00:34:57.700 | right?
00:34:58.700 | So, like, the point I'm trying to make is, like, it was a really mixed responses that
00:35:03.300 | I received.
00:35:04.440 | Some people really disliked the quote from the Bible that they didn't even believe in,
00:35:07.980 | which I don't know why you don't like something you don't believe in.
00:35:10.980 | And then the other people were like, "Well, you know, that's their beliefs."
00:35:14.260 | But God kind of opened up doors for me that I couldn't have envisioned in the past, right?
00:35:19.860 | And even now, you know, department chairs are very different.
00:35:23.340 | I work in a secular university, and there's one department chair specifically, and she's
00:35:27.820 | very, very anti-religion in general, maybe, but anti-Christian for sure.
00:35:33.860 | But then, you know, she's very nice to me, and she says, "You know, the one thing that
00:35:38.020 | frustrates me about you, Andre, is you're so polite, so unbelievably polite."
00:35:43.260 | And I'm like, "I'm sorry, I'll try to change, I'm really sorry, but please accept my most
00:35:51.180 | sincere apologies," you know?
00:35:52.980 | And we laugh about it, but her publications, the stuff that I read that she writes on religion,
00:35:58.380 | I'm like, "I don't think this is right, I think this is, like, purely your beliefs,"
00:36:02.460 | you know?
00:36:03.460 | So, but again, mixed feelings, despite all of that, you know, I don't think it was the
00:36:08.620 | universities that were pushing me along, or the graduate schools, or whatever else.
00:36:12.100 | I think it was really God opening up the right doors, even though they weren't evident in
00:36:16.180 | the beginning.
00:36:17.180 | As you can imagine, when I didn't get hired for this one job, I was like, "Oh, well, that's
00:36:20.500 | frustrating.
00:36:21.500 | What do I do now?"
00:36:22.500 | And sure enough, somebody else reached out, and they're like, "Hey, what do they offer
00:36:25.300 | you?"
00:36:26.300 | "Oh, that sucks.
00:36:27.300 | Like, come over here, we'll give you more," right?
00:36:29.860 | So, anyway, because we're going back to the mic, I'm just kidding, that's right, but anyway,
00:36:34.760 | so I think, you know, as long as you stick with it, I think God ultimately sees it through,
00:36:39.900 | right?
00:36:40.900 | So we read about Joseph, we read about David, right?
00:36:44.980 | You have so many stories of people that did not deny God.
00:36:47.700 | It was tough.
00:36:48.700 | I mean, it was really, really tough for Daniel, I'm sure.
00:36:50.740 | "Hey, look, we're going to put you with a bunch of lions, all right, for about a night.
00:36:54.700 | You survive?"
00:36:55.700 | "Okay, well, forgiven, but if not, then, you know, tough luck."
00:37:00.220 | So but then look at Daniel, what happened after that.
00:37:04.220 | Even you look at what ended up happening, even the king was like, "We got to worship
00:37:08.020 | this God," you know?
00:37:09.300 | So I think you got to stick with it, even though you are going to feel a little bit
00:37:11.780 | of pressure.
00:37:12.780 | But anyway, these are my thoughts on that.
00:37:13.780 | - Thank you.
00:37:14.780 | Wow.
00:37:15.780 | Very encouraging.
00:37:16.780 | Karl, what are your experience working in secular?
00:37:21.380 | - So in general, in Germany, the people, they are not hostile against Christianity, but
00:37:26.740 | at the same time, they're not interested.
00:37:28.820 | So if it's your belief, that's fine, do what you want.
00:37:31.320 | But don't tell me anything about this.
00:37:34.200 | So the task was in university, in med school, or even my hospital, I worked in the trauma
00:37:38.820 | department.
00:37:40.380 | It's all about relationships.
00:37:42.100 | If they see that you're authentic, if you say you're Christian, then you don't have
00:37:47.100 | to ask them questions, they will come to you and ask you questions.
00:37:50.540 | So I was praying, "Lord, that's hard.
00:37:52.740 | I don't want to be an actor, just to act like someone.
00:37:58.340 | Help me to be really a reflection of your glory, to reach out to these kind of people."
00:38:02.940 | And probably like, as some other medical young people think, "Oh yeah, I can go to the hospital,
00:38:07.380 | I can preach the gospel to the patients," forget it, you have no time.
00:38:12.300 | In the trauma emergency room, you have patient after patient.
00:38:16.100 | I worked up to 85 hours a week, 24-hour shifts every other day.
00:38:20.540 | There's no time to preach the gospel to the patients, but to the co-workers, because they
00:38:25.420 | see you every day for 24 hours, for weeks.
00:38:30.440 | So when I started first in the hospital, everyone was again, like, in a way, distanced because
00:38:38.940 | they were just observing me.
00:38:40.380 | But with the time, they came to me and asked me, "Hey, you said you're Christian.
00:38:43.800 | What do you think about this kind of thing, or this kind of matter?"
00:38:47.060 | Even at the end, when I had to resign, and I talked to my boss, I said, "Hey, I will
00:38:52.740 | leave to the States to study the Bible."
00:38:56.440 | He got in a way upset, but happy at the same time.
00:38:58.700 | He said, "Karl, I really want you to stay with us, but I think study the Bible for you
00:39:04.380 | will be much more better.
00:39:05.420 | So go, have my blessings, and do it."
00:39:07.700 | So it was just amazing to see how the Lord can use different kind of means and occasions.
00:39:15.520 | I wasn't able, like, to preach and to see someone repenting, but I just hope that my
00:39:22.520 | presence there, being a reflection of Christ, was helpful to implement some seeds in the
00:39:27.240 | people's hearts.
00:39:28.240 | - Wow.
00:39:29.240 | So encouraging.
00:39:31.000 | Amazing.
00:39:33.720 | What encouragement do you have for Christians in sciences in STEM, and what is your prayer
00:39:39.440 | for them?
00:39:40.440 | Andrew, let's start with you.
00:39:41.440 | - Yeah.
00:39:42.440 | I would say use the science to talk about God.
00:39:45.920 | I mean, it's one of the arguments, I think, and that's the one that I'm trying to make
00:39:50.120 | in the paper as well, and I know it's still brewing in my head, and one day maybe I'll
00:39:53.520 | publish a book about it.
00:39:54.640 | But it's, think about the argument of this whole thing in sciences.
00:39:59.560 | There's no intelligence, and that's the intelligent argument we're making to you.
00:40:03.840 | Just think about how absurd that is.
00:40:05.840 | - That's a great point.
00:40:06.840 | - You know?
00:40:07.840 | And I'm intelligent because I do science, and I can tell you from an intelligent perspective
00:40:11.880 | that intelligence doesn't actually exist.
00:40:13.760 | And if you don't believe me, you're not intelligent enough to understand what I'm telling you.
00:40:18.400 | So it's just the absurdity of this whole argument, and then my counter-argument, and I've made
00:40:23.480 | this challenge to so many of my fellow colleagues and students now.
00:40:27.800 | You know, if you're so intelligent, you clearly are much smarter than the Mother Nature, right?
00:40:32.200 | I mean, Mother Nature, her intelligence is zero.
00:40:35.020 | So even a child, and I'm gonna go with just a little bit of mathematics here.
00:40:38.780 | You can actually divide by zero, did you know that?
00:40:41.680 | You actually get infinity.
00:40:42.680 | We just don't tell the high school kids that because it gets so confused, you know?
00:40:47.080 | But if you actually integrate, you know, from infinity to infinity, you actually get a constant.
00:40:51.120 | Anyway, so like, the bottom line is, you can divide by zero, but if Mother Nature's intelligence
00:40:57.280 | is zero, you multiply it by infinity, you get a number.
00:41:00.360 | So basically, a child with an IQ of a certain number, be it 5, 10, or whatever the IQ is,
00:41:06.960 | right, is infinitely smarter than Mother Nature.
00:41:09.720 | Then you, as a graduate student, are infinitely smarter in squared than Mother Nature.
00:41:15.560 | Come to my lab and reproduce a smallest enzyme in the human body.
00:41:19.800 | Oxalocortylate tautomerase is the name of it.
00:41:23.080 | Shouldn't be that hard.
00:41:24.080 | Mother Nature did it.
00:41:25.080 | Her intelligence is zero.
00:41:26.080 | You're really smart.
00:41:27.080 | I've been throwing this argument out there for decades now.
00:41:30.880 | Not a single person accepted the challenge.
00:41:32.720 | Well, why not?
00:41:34.360 | You know, so what I would tell people in science, you should, I don't want to say ridicule people,
00:41:39.080 | but like, you should kind of ridicule the idea that an unintelligent creator is more
00:41:44.960 | brilliant than an intelligent human being, right?
00:41:47.680 | But then whoever the creator is, okay, and I understand there's different directions
00:41:51.560 | you can take this argument, but whoever the creator is, he's way, way, way smarter than
00:41:56.200 | all the human beings combined.
00:41:58.640 | And that's what I got from science.
00:41:59.640 | And that's what I'd encourage everybody in science to say, look, if you're so smart,
00:42:03.680 | reproduce the smallest enzyme in the human body, and nobody will accept that challenge
00:42:07.440 | ever.
00:42:08.440 | So, I don't know.
00:42:09.440 | Thank you.
00:42:10.440 | Karl, what about you?
00:42:13.920 | I was always impressed about why God gives some people wisdom, especially in medicine,
00:42:21.120 | to do things that seems to be in a way impossible.
00:42:24.880 | Like even from the easiest things, like someone has a fracture, he goes to surgery and can
00:42:29.240 | walk again out, or we go into neurology or other things.
00:42:32.600 | So there's always this kind of thing, the Lord is giving people wisdom to do something
00:42:39.000 | with the purpose to glorify his name.
00:42:41.240 | Obviously, in the secular world, people don't do this with this purpose.
00:42:44.760 | But this is the end of all means, because this is what the Lord created us.
00:42:49.000 | So my wish for young scientists is always, hey, if the Lord gives you this kind of wisdom,
00:42:54.960 | use it first of all to marvel about the Lord, how big he is, how great he is.
00:43:00.860 | He's the intelligence.
00:43:02.520 | He's in a way the one who oversees all, who holds all together.
00:43:07.000 | On the other hand, if he gives you wisdom, use it for his glory.
00:43:11.320 | And yeah, we can have money reasons or other reasons.
00:43:15.440 | But go back to your beginning, see the Lord, and use this wisdom to glorify his name and
00:43:23.000 | to help people wherever he will place you.
00:43:25.000 | Thank you.
00:43:26.000 | What about you, Joey?
00:43:27.560 | I have a few things.
00:43:29.600 | One, I think just how atheistic science and engineering community is.
00:43:35.000 | I think this is one of the classic scenarios of like light shines brighter in the darkness.
00:43:41.560 | And just like how Carl's demeanor, Andre, you're the most polite person apparently.
00:43:47.560 | Right.
00:43:48.840 | Like that, it becomes very noticeable.
00:43:51.140 | I recently had a daughter.
00:43:53.360 | Thank you.
00:43:54.360 | Yes, yes.
00:43:55.360 | The cutest baby in the world.
00:43:57.880 | Yes.
00:43:59.560 | And so a lot of parents think about their child's future and the child being born now,
00:44:06.720 | you might think I'm in this mental stress.
00:44:09.560 | For me, I think this is an opportunity because as long as my daughter's not insane, she will
00:44:15.520 | be a great proponent for Jesus Christ.
00:44:20.680 | You just need to not do anything insane.
00:44:23.180 | But obviously I'm trying to raise her to be much more than that, Christ-likeness, Christ-like
00:44:29.600 | excellence in all things, that's what we're trying to do.
00:44:32.280 | And it just makes it that much easier for Christ's glory to be really demonstrated.
00:44:38.160 | And hopefully that does open up opportunities for people to ask about the gospel, right?
00:44:44.440 | Perfect opportunity to share the gospel.
00:44:47.200 | Another one, personal experience, you know, I love theology, you know, I'm attending seminary
00:44:53.560 | right now.
00:44:55.360 | And I believe if I were to redo my life entire again, I would still choose chemical engineering,
00:45:02.280 | primarily because it helped me learn to think where I immediately know if I thought wrong.
00:45:10.260 | In theology, that's not always the case, and that's why you get into all of these heretical
00:45:14.800 | thoughts.
00:45:15.800 | It really helped me to make logical connections appropriately.
00:45:19.960 | And then I was digging into the Bible, I already knew what some of these logical errors were.
00:45:24.960 | It helped formulate the mental mind frame for doing theology properly, and it just made
00:45:31.280 | my life so much easier in terms of pursuing the greatest truth that anyone can know, which
00:45:36.400 | is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
00:45:39.300 | Along that same vein, wait, I had a third one.
00:45:44.600 | All right, maybe that's good enough.
00:45:46.720 | >> I was gonna say that you teach logic at the Master's University, and, you know, it's
00:45:52.200 | wonderful to see your heart in that, and you're, you know, passing that along to disciples,
00:45:56.840 | right?
00:45:57.840 | >> Oh, actually, I did remember.
00:45:58.840 | Okay.
00:45:59.840 | >> That's what I was trying to talk.
00:46:00.840 | That's what I was trying to give you some time for.
00:46:01.840 | >> Okay.
00:46:02.840 | Okay.
00:46:03.840 | So, you know, the culture just puts, you know, scientists and engineers on a pedestal today.
00:46:10.280 | A lot of people, especially if they're not believers, they're using it for, I would say,
00:46:14.480 | incorrect purposes.
00:46:15.480 | But we have the opportunity to actually use that pedestal, whether it's rightfully obtained
00:46:22.200 | or not, in a way that actually spreads the gospel at, yeah, it's just more opportunities
00:46:30.200 | for sharing the gospel.
00:46:31.640 | And I don't think we should shy away from that.
00:46:33.840 | Instead, we should try to really see it as an opportunity that God has gave each and
00:46:38.940 | every single one of us, to really use that as a platform to be the voice for the gospel.
00:46:45.040 | >> Thank you.
00:46:46.040 | That's very encouraging.
00:46:47.040 | What about you, Tizong?
00:46:48.040 | >> Well, after these three great brothers shared, it's hard to add on, but I would see some
00:46:52.960 | insights I was doing.
00:46:54.760 | There is time I really question why I'm still staying in this area.
00:46:58.360 | You know, people are talking about AI is coming up, a company actually doing infrastructure
00:47:02.760 | for the AI.
00:47:04.400 | So it's like, okay, maybe I'm doing some evil thing, I should really quit, you know, all
00:47:09.000 | kinds of thoughts.
00:47:10.000 | And with lawlessness, it increases, I think everyone, especially in scientific and engineering
00:47:14.880 | field, will feel like, okay, is this a field we should stay in?
00:47:18.760 | Because all the lawlessness in this area is even sometimes initiated by scientists and
00:47:24.280 | engineering.
00:47:25.280 | So it's like, should we really stay there?
00:47:27.760 | But when I stay in the scripture, as I read, just in Genesis, Lord asked actually Adam
00:47:34.040 | to cultivate the field, right, cultivate the field.
00:47:37.640 | It doesn't really, I think it doesn't just stay with the field on the earth, it's actually
00:47:44.000 | every field.
00:47:45.540 | But his first son, Cain, he is also a cultivator of the field, but he's the first murder.
00:47:51.680 | So that's after the fall.
00:47:53.560 | So the problem is not the field, God created the field.
00:47:56.800 | The problem is where your heart is, the problem is our sin, right?
00:48:01.840 | So with that, I would say that it doesn't matter which field you are in, God created
00:48:07.720 | us to cultivate the field.
00:48:11.000 | But it matters what our motivation is, and who are we really report to, responsible for,
00:48:17.440 | who are we really worshipping in our field, right?
00:48:20.920 | So we can either murder the shepherd, or we can really worship him, right?
00:48:25.640 | So that's really what I want to say, it doesn't matter where you are, you can glorify God
00:48:31.440 | in the field you're cultivating.
00:48:33.200 | - Thank you, really encouraging.
00:48:35.440 | Do we have time for one more?
00:48:38.200 | Okay, excellent.
00:48:39.200 | Would you speak on how the Lord has been teaching you recently, personally, as much as you feel
00:48:47.280 | comfortable sharing, and what Bible verses have you been meditating on, and how has the
00:48:52.560 | Lord encouraged you recently, we'll start on this side.
00:48:55.760 | - Recently, I was reading a Bible study on Ephesians.
00:48:59.840 | There is one thing, in Ephesians 1, he said, basically, "Summing up all things in Christ."
00:49:05.800 | I was really meditating on that, because this is the eternal plan, before the foundation
00:49:10.760 | of the world, and till the end of this world, that's God's entire purpose, basically summing
00:49:16.160 | up all things on heaven and earth in Christ.
00:49:19.120 | Basically, everything outside of Christ is vanity, nothing important, and God intentionally
00:49:24.920 | built his church, built his elected people toward that direction, and no matter where
00:49:30.880 | we are in, we should really align our life with that purpose, and help to share the gospel,
00:49:38.760 | because that's the only thing that can lead us, lead everyone to that purpose.
00:49:43.880 | Outside of that purpose, we have no purpose, right?
00:49:47.560 | So I just want to say that Christ is all, and it doesn't matter where we are, and help
00:49:56.960 | us to really fill other people with Christ, and fill ourself with Christ, and make Christ
00:50:02.120 | fill all.
00:50:03.120 | - That focus is so encouraging, and so convicting to me.
00:50:07.560 | Thank you.
00:50:08.560 | What about you, Joey?
00:50:09.920 | - Yeah, like I mentioned, I recently had a daughter, and so I'm a workaholic, by the
00:50:16.680 | way.
00:50:17.680 | Ever since I began teaching, I taught at a few other universities than here, I never
00:50:22.920 | taught the normal teaching load.
00:50:27.640 | The minimum I taught was like one and a half times.
00:50:31.120 | One time, I was a full-time professor here, full-time another place, full-time seminary
00:50:36.320 | student, so triple full-time duties.
00:50:39.120 | Now, okay, I was like about to break down at that point.
00:50:42.280 | I wanted to cry, but I was like, "I don't have time to cry, because I got to do work."
00:50:47.240 | But I'm just a natural workaholic.
00:50:49.040 | I just love to work.
00:50:50.960 | When I had my baby, my love for work or working didn't decrease, but God has given me something
00:50:58.280 | where the love of my daughter has just so much surpassed it.
00:51:03.680 | I just want to go home.
00:51:06.640 | But obviously, I am the provider for my family, and really embracing that role was a different
00:51:12.440 | level of submission.
00:51:13.880 | When I had marriage counseling, it was actually with Monica and her husband, by the way.
00:51:18.040 | They counseled me-
00:51:19.040 | - Pre-marital counseling.
00:51:20.040 | They don't need help.
00:51:21.040 | It's just pre-marital counseling.
00:51:22.040 | - Yeah, pre-marital.
00:51:23.040 | - Everybody should be doing when they get married.
00:51:25.760 | - Yes.
00:51:26.760 | During pre-marital counseling, I learned about submission, loving my wife, things like this.
00:51:33.600 | But I didn't mentally prepare for how much I wanted to be home.
00:51:39.840 | And so right now, the Lord's really teaching me how to just submit to, I guess, like God-ordained
00:51:47.640 | role as a provider.
00:51:48.960 | Also, I do work here, so submitting to God-given role was something that I didn't foresee I
00:51:56.880 | have to do, but I'm doing it right now.
00:51:59.360 | She's seven months old, and so it's still a work in the process.
00:52:03.520 | We love Joey and Megan and their beautiful family, so it's a privilege to know you guys.
00:52:08.280 | - Oh, wait.
00:52:09.280 | There's a Bible verse.
00:52:10.720 | So right now, I'm working through 1 and 2 Samuel in my just daily readings.
00:52:16.720 | And just King David, how his approach to life, you know, I think all of you guys kind of
00:52:22.840 | know the overall gist, but one thing that the Lord's really been guiding my mind to
00:52:27.240 | is how much he emphasized the anointed of the Lord when referring to Saul.
00:52:33.320 | And that's the only reason why he didn't kill Saul when he had the chance.
00:52:39.000 | King David had zero issues with killing people.
00:52:41.840 | He even killed the servant that killed Saul.
00:52:44.880 | But he killed the servant that killed Saul because that servant killed the anointed of
00:52:49.160 | God, and everything for him was really focused on that.
00:52:53.440 | And so that's what the Lord's really been, you know, focusing in my head is everything
00:52:58.440 | derives from God as a believer, everything should be an act of worship in the similar
00:53:03.640 | vein that, you know, King David really treated his specific scenario.
00:53:08.080 | - Joey's also my boss, so I have to say something about his leadership.
00:53:13.840 | I mean, it's so obvious that everything is Christ-centered for you, and you always think
00:53:17.400 | about how to submit all things to Jesus in everything we do.
00:53:21.240 | We always open with prayer, and I just wanted to thank God for your leadership in the Engineering
00:53:26.720 | Computer Science Department.
00:53:28.520 | - Thank you.
00:53:29.520 | - What about you, Karl?
00:53:31.280 | - In John 21, we read Jesus' famous sentence, "Follow me."
00:53:37.160 | If you read John 15, there we read about what it means to remain in Christ.
00:53:42.320 | And if you go way back to Genesis, the Lord called Abram, said, "Hey, leave Ur and go
00:53:47.680 | to the place where I want to be you."
00:53:49.440 | So these kind of connections I'm going through right now, I will graduate seminary in one
00:53:55.280 | year, I left all those, for now, this kind of medical career behind me, and people said,
00:54:01.880 | "You are such a foolish, you spend so much time, now you're going to study the Bible."
00:54:06.880 | I always said, "No, I'm not losing anything, I'm gaining more."
00:54:09.160 | I don't know what exactly, but I know even if I don't have the means, the Lord will provide
00:54:16.080 | if He wants me to be at some place.
00:54:18.840 | So my prayer is just, "Lord, I want to follow you."
00:54:22.200 | It's not the what and the where, because whatever and wherever, it's about your glory.
00:54:27.320 | So give me the wisdom to be ready to follow and to remain in you, whatever the future
00:54:32.000 | will bring, with the knowledge that you will provide for everything I need.
00:54:35.720 | That's what I'm thinking about.
00:54:37.160 | - Wow.
00:54:38.160 | You're the opposite of the rich young ruler who would refuse to let his riches go to follow
00:54:42.320 | Christ.
00:54:43.320 | So that's just so encouraging.
00:54:44.960 | I think we all have that to a certain extent in our lives.
00:54:47.640 | So we appreciate the encouragement.
00:54:49.880 | Andre?
00:54:50.880 | - Yeah, I guess a sort of philosophical dilemma that I've been having over the last maybe
00:54:56.320 | year, year and a half is the whole, "Blessed are the peacemakers," right?
00:55:00.680 | So as we kind of go through this life, and God opens up new doors, to chairship, or then
00:55:05.400 | maybe deanship, and beyond, a provost, or whatever else, and some other opportunities
00:55:10.320 | in research and grants and all this stuff, in the end, what is the point behind all of
00:55:13.880 | it?
00:55:14.880 | What is the meaning behind all of this, right?
00:55:16.080 | It's a philosophical dilemma.
00:55:17.960 | But also, "Blessed are the peacemakers," because of everything that's going on in Ukraine,
00:55:21.120 | and it really made me think about different things.
00:55:25.560 | The peace is not there.
00:55:26.840 | The whole world is looking for peace, but the peace is clearly not there.
00:55:29.600 | I mean, in Congo, there's war.
00:55:31.240 | In Sudan, there's war.
00:55:32.240 | In Yemen, in Ukraine, and all sorts of places, there's war all the time, even though people
00:55:37.080 | are looking for peace.
00:55:38.080 | And then it kind of made me realize that there was a time in history when Pilate sends Jesus
00:55:42.520 | to Herod, two heathens, don't even believe in anything Jesus has to say.
00:55:46.640 | One just wants to see miracles, the other one's like, "Well, I don't know.
00:55:49.560 | He's an innocent man, and I know you're just jealous of him," and all this stuff.
00:55:53.240 | One heathen sends Jesus to the other heathen, and they became friends, and it made me really
00:55:58.480 | think about this stuff.
00:55:59.480 | So as Christians, so more, we should be sending Jesus to all these places where the war is,
00:56:04.640 | and I think that's the ultimate goal behind all of it.
00:56:06.640 | Anyway, the thing that I've been thinking about is, "Blessed are the peacemakers," and
00:56:09.680 | if two unbelievers could become friends because of Jesus, then why can't the rest of us, professing
00:56:16.200 | Christians, also get along, especially as I read some stuff on the Ukrainian and Russian
00:56:20.840 | side, and speaking both languages, and I don't know, I think, "Blessed are the peacemakers,"
00:56:27.000 | and that's one thing I've been thinking about quite a bit.
00:56:29.480 | And then how do you bring that peace to a lot of people on the planet Earth?
00:56:33.240 | You are from a country that no longer exists, like I've heard you say before.
00:56:37.440 | Which country is it now where you were born?
00:56:40.160 | Yeah, so now it is Ukraine, but I think I was sharing this in the breakfast earlier,
00:56:44.920 | so my great-grandfather, obviously don't come from a family of Christians, my great-grandfather
00:56:49.120 | fought for the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
00:56:51.500 | His kids were Polish because the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell apart from World War I, became
00:56:54.960 | part of Poland.
00:56:56.440 | Then in 1953, our part of Poland was given to Ukraine, so we became Soviet.
00:57:03.720 | Then I became Ukrainian, and my kids were born in America.
00:57:07.320 | Alright, so five generations, five countries, and let's see, Austro-Hungary no longer exists,
00:57:13.760 | Soviet Union no longer exists, so yeah, I mean, what am I?
00:57:20.200 | You know, the way I see it is, people ask me, "Which president are you voting for?"
00:57:24.440 | and all this stuff, and I'm like, I live in a theocracy, like I live under a king, I don't
00:57:29.520 | understand, I don't vote for a king, he's there, you know, Jesus is the king, and hopefully
00:57:34.520 | you got the reference.
00:57:35.520 | Anyway, so I was born in the Soviet Union, I guess, but yeah, no, I am a citizen of the
00:57:43.320 | heavenly world, all of this is very temporary.
00:57:46.560 | If I could share something from quantum mechanics, I apologize, I don't want to—
00:57:51.080 | Well, we owe you some time because you didn't answer the first question, but go ahead.
00:57:54.560 | Oh, I did not?
00:57:55.560 | How did you come to learn?
00:57:56.560 | It's okay, you can replace it if you want to talk about quantum.
00:58:00.520 | Yeah, yeah, yeah, so from quantum physics, I'll just briefly talk about this.
00:58:04.520 | Time doesn't exist.
00:58:05.520 | I was sitting in the class under— I know, I know, bear with me, I was sitting in the
00:58:10.720 | class with this, he's a professor of quantum physics, Professor Najib is his name, he works
00:58:14.920 | with David Doitch, and if you follow quantum physics, David Doitch is sort of the name
00:58:19.240 | in the field of quantum physics, right, so one of his collaborators from Oxford came
00:58:22.160 | to Johns Hopkins, he was teaching a class, and he's like, "We don't need a book, books
00:58:26.080 | are redundant, we don't need no books," and we're like, "Okay," he's like, "Time doesn't
00:58:30.080 | exist."
00:58:31.080 | So anyway, long story short, I finally found a book by this Professor Griffith, he's from
00:58:35.880 | University of Michigan if I'm not mistaken, but one of the things they talk about, they
00:58:40.320 | say, "Look, if you start thinking too much about the problem of time, the problem of
00:58:45.440 | the fact that we don't really exist unless there's a conscious observer," I'm talking
00:58:48.960 | purely quantum physics here, "unless there's a conscious observer 24/7, we don't really
00:58:52.160 | exist."
00:58:53.160 | So then the question is, who's the conscious observer?
00:58:54.960 | The argument today is, well, you're the conscious observer, okay, that's fine, what about before
00:58:58.760 | the mind came to be, who's the conscious observer, right?
00:59:02.800 | And Professor Griffith says this comment, he says, "Well, just don't contemplate these
00:59:06.920 | things, just kind of accept it," and I'm like, "Well, that's very not scientific of you."
00:59:13.280 | But you know, so time is very temporal, and time doesn't really exist in the way that
00:59:17.640 | we think of time, right, so then we have to think about it from the perspective of what
00:59:20.880 | really matters if you take the time away, right, and I think it's how much we actually
00:59:25.000 | put towards the service of God.
00:59:27.040 | And as far as if I go back to my conversion, a very long story, but anyway, long story
00:59:30.920 | short, I had to leave my house, tell you another day, I apologize, it's just too difficult,
00:59:38.400 | so yeah.
00:59:39.480 | I just love your gift of taking crazy intelligent stuff and connecting with apologetics, and
00:59:49.520 | your mission is so clear, everything that you're doing, everything that you're thinking
00:59:53.720 | is like, "How can I challenge people intellectually so I can flip the world upside down and they
00:59:59.600 | can be ready to see how foolish they are and they receive the gospel?"
01:00:04.960 | So I'm so encouraged by that.
01:00:08.080 | Part of having this conversation was to start a discussion, a broader discussion amongst
01:00:13.080 | all of you, so we're hoping during lunchtime you'll share your testimonies, you'll share
01:00:17.840 | your stories of how the Lord has worked in your lives in similar ways that we've shown
01:00:23.000 | here in this discussion.
01:00:24.920 | And before we go and take a break, we'll ask Dr. Dewey to please pray for us if he's here.
01:00:33.400 | Thank you.
01:00:36.720 | And let's thank our panelists.
01:00:41.200 | - Okay, let's pray.
01:00:48.880 | Dear Father, I just want to thank you so much for this conference, Lord, and for this institute
01:00:53.960 | that's in development.
01:00:54.960 | Lord, what a treat it is for us to be together with others with interest in the STEM fields
01:01:00.000 | and practices in the STEM fields.
01:01:03.000 | Lord, this is a neat time for us to get together, to enjoy fellowship, Lord, and to share lives
01:01:11.400 | with one another.
01:01:12.760 | Father, we just thank you for all that you've done.
01:01:16.560 | We want to remind ourselves and each other that you are the reason that we're here.
01:01:21.360 | It is our devotion to you and our love of you that drives our lives.
01:01:26.120 | And Lord, we just pray that you would bless this fellowship as we spend time together
01:01:30.280 | in Christ's name we pray, amen.
01:01:31.720 | Amen.
01:01:32.720 | - Amen.
01:01:33.720 | - Amen.
01:01:34.720 | - Amen.
01:01:34.720 | - Amen.
01:01:35.720 | - Amen.
01:01:36.720 | - Amen.
01:01:36.720 | [BLANK_AUDIO]